^ While I do understand what the show writers were trying to do, and I can also totally understand how others can make justifications for it, and have it make sense, that doesn't mean I can agree with the decision.
The caveat to fan interpretations is that anything can be justified with enough effort. Fictional universes always come with their own rules, that is a given. They don't even need to follow the rules of the real world to be believable, they just need to follow their own. This is also known as the suspension of disbelief, not necessarily important, but interesting to know. These rules can be bent and twisted and flipped around and they would still be fine, but the point where it breaks is the problem.
My issue with the Penny situation has roots in my issue with the new direction for RWBY as a whole, so here we go I guess.
RWBY up to this point had been a fun action filled light hearted romp of pretty girls breaking the laws of physics. It was also a cliche storm of weirdness, and that's fine. There is nothing wrong with an avalanche of cliches. Cliches are fun, they're expected, they're forgiven because "holy shit that girl ran up a wall with magic and decapitated bird monster with a huge ass scythe!" That's fun right? If this followed real world rules, would we ever get to see that?
So this universe introduces a new character. This character is a robot. Robots in other fictional works are essentially immortal. Robots can be dismembered, and crushed and tossed around, but as long as their memory is intact, they'll be fine, more or less. This universe has used this logic before, that's how other universes do it, what reason do we have to think there is a change?
So, this character is destroyed in a way that in other shows would be a "flesh wound" for that character. That's what we expect. So we wait. And then nothing happens. This character is treated like any other human character. Dead is dead. That is sad.
Okay. Cool. But why though? Why didn't she get a second chance? Was her being a robot completely irrelevant? Was the lesson here "All life is precious, even artificial ones?" Okay. Cool. Still doesn't explain what happened. If there is one, why wasn't it given, in universe, even if it was much later? "Because death is dramatic," still isn't an acceptable answer because it doesn't address the fact she is a robot. I'm all for subverting expectations and sudden genre tonal shifts, but if it breaks that suspension of disbelief the plot twist isn't worth it.
edit: that was... way more words than I thought I wrote... if a mod has issues with what I've just done I am 100% willing to paring this down or deleting it outright
last edited at Mar 2, 2019 7:31PM